• Serbia’s gay film festival canceled because of violence threats. Filmmaker Bruce LaBruce: “I am disheartened but I cannot say surprised that Merlinka, the first ever gay art/film festival to be held in Belgrade… has been postponed owing to the threat of homophobic violence, presumably from extreme right-wing elements/neo-Nazi skinheads.”

I could care less what some archaic, bronze-age text says. It isn’t even good as a work of literature; it’s virtually incoherent and rambling.

Good job, dumbass, you’re giving their arguments more credibility.

Sep 10, 2009 at 6:41 pm · @Reply ·

Chance

Couple of thoughts…

Uruguay is 57% irreligious, according to Gallup. That means that only 57% of the adult population reported that religion was not important.

Compare: Canada, 55% irreligious. United States, 33% irreligious.

But who am I kidding. Religion doesn’t have anything to do with this. Let’s not talk about that.

Sep 10, 2009 at 7:12 pm · @Reply ·

Dan

His odds are slim without an attorney, but he’s right. Several recent versions of the Bible have clear references to homosexuality simply inserted into them, without scholarly evidence to back them up. Homosexuality as a distinct category of behavior didn’t exist in New Testament Rome, and most scholars now agree that the biblical verses presented as saying that homosexuality is wrong were understood quite differently at the time they were written.

The NIV is a case in point. Just to give one example, the Sodom passage is reworked and tightened up to make it look straightforward: “Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom – both young and old – surrounded the house. They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them” (Genesis 19:4-5). This gives the false impression that a group of men clearly wanted to have sex with two other men.

The Hebrew refers to the crowd two ways: “the men” and “all the people,” so it isn’t clear that they consisted of men. Of course, the whole antigay argument falls apart right there: if the authors had intended to make a point about homosexuality, they would have made it clear that this was a crowd of men. In the Hebrew, the crowd also says, “…that we may know them.” They could easily have said, “…that we may lie with them” if they wanted to refer to sex. That’s not even counting several versions that render as “homosexuals” words that couldn’t possibly have had that meaning.

There should be laws under which these translators and publishers can be sued, or at least forced be honest. They’re causing a lot of harm and defaming an entire social class.

Sep 10, 2009 at 8:41 pm · @Reply ·

MackMichael

@Dan: Terrific information. Also, in regards to the verb “to know, ” it is used 943 times in the Bible, and in only 10 of these is it believed to be properly translated to be the “carnal” sense of “to know.” If this is the meaning of “to know” in the story of Sodom, it would be the single instance that it was used to describe a same gender carnal experience. I constantly am met with folks who become fiercely adamant and angry when I bring this up, with even gay people telling me that it is obvious that this is what it means in the story of Sodom, so have it at, but keep in mind that I’m just reporting the various thoughts postulated by theologians.

Anyway, even if “to know” in the story of Sodom is meant to be a carnal sense of the verb, it still is not referring to homosexual consensual sex; rather, the demands are to send the angels out to the crowd to be raped.

Moreover, as you point out Dan, the word “homosexual” was not even invented until the 19th century. The understanding of homosexuality in Biblical time was very limited, the practice was generally known as a form of ritual, involving prostitution and pederasty–such is the case when Paul writes of it in Romans, when he speaks of excess. The understanding of the day as to what was nature and their references to “natural” was also very different from the way that we approach the concepts of “nature” and what is natural today. They had no understanding then of homosexuality as a natural condition–heck, as we are becoming increasingly aware of these days, a woeful number of people still have no concept of the homosexuality in the natural sense. When Paul refers to “natural” he is speaking of what is customary, and one concludes this by studying the entire text, and not relying upon one piece of scripture taken out context. He speaks of excess, passion run amok, and in this sense he is speaking of sex as idolatry–which was a sin throughout scripture.

To single out homosexuals as idol worshipers is ridiculous in a day an age when nearly every American lusts after the next new car, a brand new kitchen, or that quarter pounder being advertised by McDonalds on television.

Matthew 19:12, I believe, refers very specifically to ennuchs. Yet I have read some translation of the Gospels that drop that references and instead says “men who cannot marry.” Which is true for ennuchs, actually, but ennuchs are far more than that.